Chapter Nineteen: Such a Quiet Thing
Ponyville
12/20/3
3:54 P.M.
Twilight absently looked around the unusually quiet town, her eyes bloodshot. While the battle two days ago hadn’t tipped the situation into full-scale war thanks to the Royal Sisters’ forbearance, everypony was on edge. To most, it had become clear that war was inevitable. Captain Orramas had met with the Princesses later that day, insisting that the stormtroopers didn’t have permission for their actions and offering the Empire’s deepest and most sincere apologies. In the end, despite Luna’s significant protests, the Imperials weren’t ordered to leave Equestria – yet. Celestia had been the first to kill in the battle, and while the stormtroopers had made their intentions quite clear, she felt like she would have been responsible if war broke out. This time, however, the Imperials didn’t get away totally unpunished. They were forced to give a public apology to all of ponykind and pay severe reparations, and strict limitations were placed on their activities.
Ten million credits were paid into the Equestrian treasury, and fifty thousand credits were paid to the family of each pony who died. Any Imperials who wished to leave the Everfree Forest now had to ask for permission in advance and leave their weapons behind. Those few who did get permission almost universally shot looks of hatred at every pony they saw, and received the same. They were allowed to retrieve their dead for whatever burial rituals humans engaged in, but they didn’t even bother trying to get their wounded returned to them. The surviving stormtroopers were now imprisoned in Canterlot Castle, where Luna was spending most of her time trying to figure out how to access their dreams. Also held in Canterlot were their weapons and armor, which were being examined eagerly by some of Equestria’s greatest scientific minds. Twilight would have been there with them if she wasn’t too exhausted to think straight. Almost dying, and seeing all those other ponies and humans dying around her, had shaken her deeply. But that wasn’t the reason she hadn’t been sleeping well.
“Open me. Learn my secrets. Use my power.”
The voice had filled her dreams every night since she had first seen the holocron.
“Open me. Learn my secrets. Use my power.”
She had torn through her library looking for something that would make it go away, and found nothing.
“Open me. Learn my secrets. Use my power.”
The night before last, she had asked Luna for help.
“Open me. Learn my secrets. Use my power.”
When she woke up, an extremely concerned Luna had informed her that her mind was somehow closed off.
“Open me. Learn my secrets. Use my power.”
She had tried gathering her friends and calling on the power of the Elements, but even they had no effect.
“Open me. Learn my secrets. Use my power.”
After that, she had started hearing the voice even when she was awake.
“Open me. Learn my secrets. Use my power.”
And it was getting more insistent.
“Open me! Learn my secrets! Use my power! Open me! Learn my secrets! Use my power! OPEN ME! LEARN MY SECRETS! USE MY POWER!”
On the edges of her perception, Twilight noticed that she had stumbled all the way outside of Ponyville and collapsed to the ground, but most of her mind was preoccupied with the voice shrieking in her head.
“OPEN ME! LEARN MY SECRETS! USE MY POWER! OPEN ME! LEARN MY SECRETS! USE MY POWER!”
“Fine!” she screamed. After three nights without any rest, and over a full day of the voice constantly speaking in her head, she couldn’t take any more. “I’ll do it! Just stop!”
The voice faded back to its original whisper, but didn’t disappear.
“Open me. Learn my secrets. Use my power.”
Everfree Imperial Garrison
11:47 P.M.
Twilight examined the Imperial base from just inside the forest. It wouldn’t be difficult to get past the fence, as the base didn’t seem to be designed with defense against flying creatures in mind. Unfortunately, it also didn’t have any windows, so she’d have to go in through the main door. She recalled that it required some sort of code to unlock, but she didn’t recall what it was. Well, one step at a time – she could worry about the door once the fence was dealt with.
She spread her wings and flew over the fence as fast as she could. Landing next to the wall, she held her breath, hoping none of the guards had seen her lavender form against the dark blue sky. After several tense seconds, she finally let out a sigh – and promptly smacked a hoof to her face. I could have just teleported over! Nothing she could do about it now. At least she hadn’t been spotted, and remembering now would make the rest of her break-in easier.
As if on cue, the door hissed open and a trooper strolled out. She had no idea what he was doing going outside at this time of night, but it gave her the perfect opportunity to teleport inside. The door shut just after she rematerialized, and she quickly took in her environment. No guards. Good. Carefully, she crept through the halls towards the central turbolift. Strangely, she only had to hide from a patrol once, and the lift was as unguarded as the front door. This was starting to feel very wrong – and not just because she was taking orders from a voice in her head that she was fairly certain was malevolent.
The door hissed open to deposit her on the floor that held the officers’ rooms. Still no guards. Why? She didn’t waste much time thinking about it. This close to the holocron, she could feel its pull almost like a physical sensation. The voice in her head had fallen silent now, and for a moment, she thought about leaving. But she knew that if she didn’t see this through, the voice would just return, even louder than before. At last, she came to Malen’s room. She hesitated. If she was going to be caught, it would be here. Mustering her courage, she used her magic to press the button that opened the door. She peered inside. His bed was neatly made, and she didn’t see him anywhere. It concerned her to think of what evil he might be up to, but her goal was now in sight.
Once again, the holocron glowed more brightly as she approached, and one last time, she heard in her head, “Open me. Learn my secrets. Use my power.” Strangely, the voice sounded somewhat different this time than it had been in her dreams and over the last day-and-a-half, though she couldn’t quite put her hoof on what had actually changed.
She examined the object for a few moments, trying to figure out how to open it. She eventually decided to pick it up and give it a closer inspection. As soon as it was in her telekinetic grip, however, she felt a wave of fear and anger wash over her. Or perhaps not over her, but through her. The sides of the pyramid split near the top and folded down, revealing a black crystal inside. The crystal glowed with a strange light, and an image of a human appeared over it. The human seemed vaguely female, though the shapeless black cloak, disheveled white hair, and decidedly ugly facial features made it hard to tell for certain.
“Greetings, acolyte,” the image said, in the same voice that had spoken in Twilight’s head just moments ago. “I am Sorzus Syn, Lord of the Sith.”
In a foul swamp, a small green creature dropped his cane and clutched at his chest as a ripple of shadow swept through the galaxy, threatening to overwhelm his failing heart. In a vast desert baked by two suns, an old man started off towards the nearest homestead at remarkable speed, then slowed to a halt when he realized that it wasn’t an immediate threat to his young ward that had filled his soul with dread. And in a towering palace, a laugh darker than the center of a black hole echoed through the halls.
The image disappeared, and Twilight’s purple, green, and black magical aura faded from around the holocron. She backed away from it, feeling unsteady on her hooves, and bumped into something behind her.
“I knew you wouldn’t be able to keep yourself away. A lust for knowledge has been the downfall of innumerable Jedi before you.”
“Malen!” She snarled, and her horn bubbled with power. “What has this thing done to me?!”
He smiled at her fury. “Oh, very little, I assure you. Far less than you believe. In fact, until a few minutes ago, it had done nothing at all.”
“LIAR! I heard it! It made me come here!”
“I? A liar? Well, guilty as charged. But not in this particular case. I’ve been watching you, Twilight Sparkle. Watching far more closely than you would have thought possible. And I’ve been listening. Not just to your words, but to your thoughts. I must say, the capacity of the mind to deceive itself never fails to impress me.”
She seized him with her telekinesis, ready to tear him apart. If anything, his infuriating smirk only grew. “Stop lying to me!” she demanded. “What’s happened to me?”
“Why, only what you chose to do to yourself. This is a powerful holocron, steeped heavily in the Dark Side of the Force, but even it isn’t able to cause the torment you’ve gone through. You’ve only heard its call in your mind twice, both times when you entered my chambers. All the other times? That was your voice, Twilight. You wanted to come back. But you couldn’t justify it to yourself. So instead, your subconscious made up a justification of its own. You traumatized yourself into returning. All those attempts you made to remove the voice failed because it wasn’t some foreign spirit possessing you, and because, on some level, you wanted them to fail.”
Her grip fizzled out. “No… no, that’s… that’s crazy. I’d never…”
The Inquisitor laughed. “Oh, my dear, dear Princess. The Dark Side lurks within all of us, just looking for a way to break out, to take control. And indeed, it’s looking. It has a will all of its own, and it desires to draw all things down into itself. All it needs to spread its influence is a small crack in your defenses. Your desire for knowledge and control provided that opening, and the seductive pall that surrounds every Sith holocron widened it into a gaping chasm. But make no mistake – the holocron may have sped up the process, but you would have fallen on your own one day. The levees around your spirit were already leaking. This just provided the final push needed to break them. And as Master Yoda would always tell us, ‘Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.’ You belong to it now, and not even your precious ‘Elements of Harmony’ can save you. You belong to me… my new apprentice.”
Twilight collapsed to the ground, moaning as darkness swirled at the edges of her vision. “No… no… no…”
For the first time, the Dark Jedi’s expression shifted to something that might loosely be called compassion. “In the immortal words of one Dark Lord, ‘It is such a quiet thing, to fall. But far more terrible is to admit it.’”
Stats
Page generated in 0.034 seconds
Total duration
1,079 users online
1,644,960 hits today, 2,054,621 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
YEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SITH TWILIGHT!!!!!!!!
Equestrian won't know what hit it!!!!
I believe Vader would be interested in twilight once this is over
It's over empire wins sith twilight rules all
That's it.
Malen is my favorite character now.
I still want vader to show up and kick celestias ass, but sith twilight going rogue and killing her own friends is soooo much more better ????????????????
7268495
What did he do to earn such high praise?
All you people act like being Sith is some inescapable fate. Those who fell down that path were led by lies and promises of power, and they continued going down that path either because they were the kind of twisted soul that reveled in the Dark Side or they thought they had no other choice. I'm pretty sure Twilight's inherent good nature and the support of her friends will see her through this. After all, even Darth Vader returned to the Light Side at the end.
And honestly, if Twilight's mind wasn't already being mentally assaulted by the holocron, Malen's pathetic attempts at manipulation wouldn't work at all. Which is why I suppose he's trying it now, when she's vulnerable. And seriously, does he think she'll just capitulate like that? "Oh I guess since you say so I'm your apprentice now and I'll listen to everything you say and never try to stab you in the back especially since I have more Force potential than you." I thought that Sith were brought up in a backstabbing, betrayal-inducing environment, and yet Malen seems oblivious to the possible consequences of what will happen further along down the road should he succeed.
So, theories, and hopes for the future.
1) Twilight might go dark for a while, but if she doesn't get redeemed by her friends sooner or later, then I'm going to want to know why.
2) Sweet Kotor II reference at the end there. I approve.
3) The author said that only two characters from 'canon' are going to show up. My top possibilities:
A) Ahsoka and Darth Maul
B) Ahsoka and Rex
C) Maul and Rex
The thing is that the Clone Wars movie and series DO fall within Legends as well as canon. However, Star Wars Rebels, which reveals the fates of all three of the aforementioned characters in canon, is NOT part of Legends. This means that we have no idea what happens to these characters after the Clone Wars end.
Since we never hear from them again, this means that if they do survive, their further adventures were not chronicled. This means that it would make sense for them to wind up somewhere inaccessible to the majority of the galaxy, which, assuming that the author doesn't want to start rewriting Legends, means that Equus will fade into obscurity and/or its existence would remain heavily classified and/or data gets lost, as no one knows about Equestria during the rebellion or in the fifty+ years following that. It's possible that they would be rediscovered sometime between then and the Legacy storyline, but due to there being no evidence for them there either, this pushes any chance at being rediscovered up to about 150 years after this current point in the timeline.
Of course, the author might be planning something else entirely.
I await the future.
7270668
Good to see I'm not the only one that doesn't want to see bad things happen to ponies for asinine HFY. And considering how different the EG humans are from regular humans, especially physically, I doubt they'd be good infiltrators, even with armor.
Though if she does become a Sith, even for a little while, how would she wield a lightsaber, outside of using unicorn telekinesis? Last I checked, I haven't seen any alien races in Star Wars that weren't some form of biped.
7269607 Thank you again for being a voice of reason here. Honestly, given how most commenters react to these Star Wars crossovers, it almost makes me want to never read another one again. Thanks for providing another view.
I would have thought the Elements would have worked, but then again it is only my head canon that Nightmare Moon, Demon Shimmer, and Midnight Sparkle were actually driven insane, so this version might not cure craziness.
7270737
The Elements, or perhaps the Crystal Heart, may work on people like Malen, but I doubt they would work on people who are simply following orders or just mentally disturbed, like Aerin. I'm not quite sure though, because the way that magic is explained as unrefined use of the Force in this fic rather than being a separate thing, who knows how Harmony magic would interact with the Dark Side.
Seriously though, can the Force allow you to transmute objects or spontaneously grow a mustache, or travel back in time? Some of the things unicorns can do with magic dont seem like things even the most powerful of Jedi are capable of.
7270754
You'd be amazed by what the Force can do.
There are a few sapient alien species with nonstandard biology, though they are admittedly rather few and far between. For Twilight, lightsaber combat would indeed be done with telekinesis, as best displayed by that Dark Lord Malen mentioned.
7270862
I'm just staring at that picture of the Sar Agorn and wondering how. And while that is an impressive list of Force powers, aside from the time travel one which seems really iffy and none of the cited examples seem to actually have anything to do with the Force, most of them seem to involve being corrupted by the Dark Side. Why does the Dark Side get all the cool powers, really? Anyway, it seems like pony magic is able to do a lot of what those Force powers can do, without any sort of corrupting influence. Whether this means that ponies are actually using Dark Side powers without knowing it and are immune to corruption, or that there is some measure of truth to the Siths' claims that their powers (or at least, not all of their powers) are beyond good and evil, Light and Dark, and are simply results of research and experimentation into the Force without restrictions and morals, is yet to be seen. Also a lot of the stuff seems to come from the EU, which has dubious canonicity at best. Very interesting reads, though; thanks for the links.
7270960
Also: You called for some Harmony?
Sometimes, I think the Force is the most OP thing in any fictional universe ever. Just about any power from any other franchise has cropped up as a Force power somewhere.
Anyways, this story takes place in the Legends universe/old Expanded Universe, so all those articles are canon in this universe.
A heads-up: a lot of the following will be my personal take on the Star Wars universe and the Force, as the "true nature of the Force" is a hotly contested subject both in-universe and IRL.
As stated on the Force travel page, a big thing in the Star Wars universe is that the Light Side is focused around living in harmony with the universe, while the Dark Side is all about dominating it, so anything that changes "the natural order of the universe" is considered Dark Side. A lot of the time, intent matters a lot more than the actual power. Quite a few Jedi used Force lightning, for example. Of course, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." The Dark Side is a real thing, and abilities that alter things at some fundamental level or are extremely violent seem to have some inherent connection to it. However, some particularly powerful beings, such as the Father and the Celestials (interesting name, that), were able to use both sides with impunity. Also, the various Gray Jedi groups and the original Je'daii Order used both sides, though they're typically considered to be at a higher risk of falling to the Dark Side than the Jedi most people are familiar with.
In short, with a bit of caution and natural resiliency, it's quite possible to use abilities that are typically associated with the Dark Side without becoming some cackling, maniacal villain.
7270736 There was one; I forget the name, but he was from the old Dark Horse Star Wars comic series I think. The wife & child of a Jedi slain in Order 66 sought him out and found his apprentice. When she met him, he looked just like a quadruped herd animal.
7270737
I actually agree with you guys and hope the ponies win
8387358
Though that does not mean I don't want to continue seeing this struggle